Candidate Privacy Notice

What is the purpose of this document?

Harcus Sinclair LLP is a "data controller". This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.

You are being provided with a copy of this privacy notice because you are applying for work with us. It makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the recruitment exercise, and how long it will usually be retained for. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679) (GDPR).

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.

Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

Accurate and kept up to date.

Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and covering letter.

Any information you provide to us during an interview.

Any other information collected as part of the application process, including test results.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

You, the candidate.

If you have applied for the position through a recruitment agency, we will collect data via the agency.

Disclosure and Barring Service in respect of criminal convictions, if applicable.

Your named referees.

How we will use information about you

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.

Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.

Communicate with you about the recruitment process.

Keep records related to our hiring processes.

Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

Why do we need to process personal information?

It is in our legitimate interest to process your personal information to determine your suitability for the role and decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully.

How we use particularly sensitive personal information

We will use your particularly sensitive personal information in the following ways:

We will use information about your disability status to consider whether we need to provide appropriate adjustments during the recruitment process, for example whether adjustments need to be made during a test or interview.

We will use information about your race or national or ethnic origin, religious, philosophical or moral beliefs, or your sexual life or sexual orientation, to ensure meaningful equal opportunity monitoring and reporting.

Information about criminal convictions

We may collect information about your criminal convictions history if we would like to offer you the role (conditional on checks and any other conditions, such as references, being satisfactory).

We are entitled to carry out a criminal records check in order to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in your criminal convictions history which makes you unsuitable for the role. In particular:

The role of a solicitor requires a high degree of trust and integrity since it involves dealing with high value client money and so we may ask you to seek a basic disclosure of your criminal records history.

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our Data Protection Policy.

Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else's interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

We may also process such information about members or former members in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.

Data sharing

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the Director of Finance and Management (in relation to IT and accounting contractors) and the Operations Manager (in relation to HR, marketing and facilities management functions).

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Transferring personal information outside the European Economic Area

We may need to transfer your personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). We will only do so if the reason for the transfer serves our legitimate interests, or there is another lawful condition for the transfer.

To the extent that we transfer your personal information outside of the EEA, we will use all reasonable endeavours to ensure that a similar degree of protection is afforded to such information as is offered within the EU. We will do so by ensuring one or more of the following safeguards is in place:

The country to which the information is being transferred has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission;

We use a specific form of contract approved by the European Commission that gives personal information the same protection it has within Europe; and/or

If the personal information is being transferred to the United States of America, ensuring that the provider is affiliated with the Privacy Shield, which requires it to provide a similar level of protection to personal information to that which the information benefits from within Europe.

You can obtain further information about these measures from our Data Compliance Officer.

Data retention

How long will you use my information for?

If your application is unsuccessful, we will retain your personal information for a period of one year after we have communicated our decision to you. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information. We retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way.

If we wish to retain your personal information on file, on the basis that a further opportunity may arise in future and we may wish to consider you for that, we will write to you separately, seeking your explicit consent to retain your personal information for a fixed period on that basis.

Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.

Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.

Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).

Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.

Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Operations Manager in writing.

Data compliance officer

We have appointed a data compliance officer (DCO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DCO. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

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